The ANC is undermining its stated mission of creating five million new jobs through poor foreign policy, nepotism and ill-conceived labour legislation, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Friday.
What is rarely understood is that choosing a policy priority has consequences for every decision we make in government," Zille wrote in her weekly newsletter SA Today.
"And far too often the priority is undermined by other decisions, which may seem unrelated but have profound implications for job creation."
Zille said South Africa's policy on Zimbabwe was hampering chances of building a viable regional economy.
"Nothing would do more to boost the regional economy than a sustainable and stable democratic solution to the crisis in Zimbabwe... Yet the ANC's foreign policy is aimed primarily at shielding Robert Mugabe from this outcome."
She said the ruling party's policy of cadre deployment had scared off investors by contributing to the collapse of local government service delivery, and its new labour bills would put an estimated two million jobs at risk.
The ruling party was polarised by a debate about the bills and whether the state should itself create more jobs, or create an environment where the private sector could so, Zille said.
She added it was "unlikely to be resolved" because the party's main priority was in fact not to create jobs, but to preserve unity in the ruling alliance.
"Hard choices cannot be avoided. And (President) Jacob Zuma's success thus far has been based on his ability to side-step such choices.
"But time is now running out. People are losing patience with rhetorical commitments. 2011 will be the year in which we see whether the president is really prepared to make job creation his priority, or whether this will be displaced by the ANC's established default positions after the (local government) election."
